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Russia threatens Britain with retaliation if involvement in Ukraine war deepens (www.pbs.org)

submitted 6 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

119 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Russia on Monday threatened to strike British military facilities and said it would hold drills simulating the use of battlefield nuclear weapons amid sharply rising tensions over comments by senior Western officials about possibly deeper involvement in the war in Ukraine.

After summoning the British ambassador to the Foreign Ministry, Moscow warned that Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory with U.K.-supplied weapons could bring retaliatory strikes against British military facilities and equipment on Ukrainian soil or elsewhere.

The remarks came on the eve of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration to a fifth term in office and in a week when Moscow on Thursday will celebrate Victory Day, its most important secular holiday, marking its defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

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[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The term exists in English, too, with the exact same meaning - "saber rattling".

[–] tal 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Hmm. I wonder where it came from. Might have been German.

goes to check etymonline

Gives the date of first-known use, but not where. I assume that that means that this was in English, since normally they list the origin language.

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=saber+rattling

saber (n.)

type of heavy, single-edged sword, usually slightly curved, 1670s, from French sabre "heavy, curved sword" (17c.), alteration of sable (1630s), from German Sabel, Säbel, which probably is ultimately from Hungarian szablya "saber," literally "tool to cut with," from szabni "to cut." The Balto-Slavic words (Russian sablya, Polish szabla "sword, saber," Lithuanian šoblė) perhaps also are via German, but Italian sciabla seems to be directly from Hungarian. Saber-rattling "militarism" is attested from 1922. Saber-toothed cat (originally tiger) is attested from 1849, so named for the long upper canine teeth.

EDIT: Oooh, etymonline is wrong (or at least not complete). Mirriam-Webster has earlier known uses, says that it was used in the UK first, around the late 1870s.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/saber-rattling-word-history

There is no unanimity of opinion on why we came to refer to this kind of behavior as saber-rattling. Some think that it comes from the practice of 18th-century Hungarian cavalry units had of brandishing their sabers at opponents prior to charging. Others have said that it comes from the habit that military officers had in the early 20th century of ominously shaking their scabbard when issuing orders to subordinates. Our records indicate that the two words began seeing use in fixed fashion around 1880, making it unlikely that it was directly related to either of the causes given above.

Of late it has been in some quarters impossible to mention the word patriotism without having the taunt of being a sabre-rattling BOBADIL thrown in one’s face.

— The Standard (London, Eng.), 19 Feb. 1879

The “Sabre Rattling” of M. Coumoundouros, especially his assertion that by the coming spring he will have 86,000 men in the field, and that this number of troops will have been got together by the 10th of December.

— The Leeds Mercury (Leeds, Eng.), 3 Nov. 1880

The word appears to have begun in the press in the United Kingdom first, and by the early 20th century had spread to newspapers in the United States.

[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I wondered who was first, too, and looked it up before. The date seems to be in dispute, but English is apparently the original language to coin the term.